Turning to Adler, whereas Geldray’s musical career was
largely European, and Pitch’s British, Adler’s was largely American.. In his
lifetime, too, he knew and worked with or for some of the greats of the music
business.
He was born in 1914 in Baltimore where he said “"I spent my first 14 years plotting my escape.", he reputedly learnt the harmonica at an early age – or rather the mouth organ as he preferred to call it. He ran away from home and spent the next dozen years in the entertainment business. At some point he worked for the great Florence Ziegfeld, and for Eddie Cantor, was a friend of the famous gangster “Legs” Diamond, played at Hollywood parties, provided music for Fred Astaire, played with Duke Ellington, and perhaps most famously played a mouth-organ solo of Rhapsody in Blue, which Gershwin absolutely adored. According to Adler, Gershwin said "It sounds as if the goddamned thing was written for you."
In 1934 Adler went to Britain to play in a review, and found
to his surprise, according to his biographers that the mouth organ was very popular
this side of the Atlantic. Mouth organ sales, it is said, skyrocketed. Whether
true or not there can be no doubt that Adler’s star had arrived. He had fourth
billing after stage greats Charles Laughton, Vivien Leigh, and Rex Harrison in
the film Sidewalks of London.
In America, too, Adler found increased popularity,
especially with his predilection to play classical tunes such as Ravels Bolero on
the mouth organ, and to play major works specifically written for the instrument.
The war intervened, and Adler went on to entertain troops
but as Michael Freeland said in Adler’s obituary, “it all came unstuck when the
House of UnAmerican Activities Committee started investigating him - mainly
because he had been a member of the Committee for the First Amendment, led by
Humphrey Bogart, which went to Washington to protest at the blacklisting of
Hollywood writers. He was blacklisted himself, although never brought to
testify.”
Adler went to the UK where the madness that had enveloped
the States had not taken hold, and performed in cabaret and concert, and on
cruise ships, but notably wrote the music for the film “Genevieve” in 1954,
which became a smash hit. Indeed the music was nominated for an Oscar, but appallingly
Adler’s name did not appear on the credits, because of the blacklisting. “"Fortunately,
it didn't win," Adler was to say.
It is for Genevieve that Adler is most remembered but he
continued to work throughout his life, occasionally working with such as Sting,
Meatloaf and Kate Bush. Late in life he became well known for his anecdotes
about his early life and Hollywood
Of his Judaism, he was very secular, but non the less his
Jewish origins were strong within him. He gloried in the fact that in April
1945 he had been able to play Rhapsody in Blue for American troops in the
Nuremberg Stadium where so many Nazi rallies had taken place. He refused to
play in Germany for many years, and in 1967 went to Israel to entertain troops
in the six-day war.
Summing up, he was a virtuoso, and Britain can be proud that
it gave him a home.
These books are available from Amazon:
Kosher Foxtrot
Jews and the Sea
The Definitive Guide to Jewish Miscellany and Trivia
No comments:
Post a Comment